Recent Progress and Perspective on Synergistic Electrospinning and Joule Heating for Advanced Electrocatalyst Design

Conventional solid phase synthesis of electrocatalysts is in the thermodynamic equilibrium, which can lead to nanoparticle fragmentation and high energy loss. Ultrafast Joule heating provides a kinetic breakthrough, but it can be applied directly to powder precursors that exhibit electro‐thermal heterogeneity. This review highlights a combination of electrospinning and ultrafast Joule heating. By reconfiguring the precursor as an active, engineered network, continuous carbon nanofiber network forms uniform conductive pathways and one‐dimensional confinement bars agglomeration. This allows in situ synthesis of nonequilibrium catalysts, including defect‐engineered carbon, high‐loading single‐atom catalysts, and high‐entropy nano‐alloys. Finally, key challenges and future trends concerning the precursor carbonization controversy, scalable production uniformity, and in situ characterization are discussed.